Metropolitan Opera – Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. May 11, 2019.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.  Balcony (Seat A19, $133).

Story.  See previous post.

Conductor – Yannick Nezet-Seguin.  Blanche – Isabel Leonard, Madame de Croissy – Karita Mattila, Sister Constance – Erin Morley, Mother Marie – Karen Cargill, Madame Lidone – Adrianne Pieczonka.

I saw this opera a few years ago.  Anne couldn’t go, so we decided to do this again.  This entry is not supposed to be a complete review (few entries are), but rather a record of some of the thoughts that came to me during the performance.

From all indications, Yannick has been embraced enthusiastically by the audience, the critics, the Met management (at least the PR machine of theirs), and possibly the musicians.  I think he conducted three to four operas this season, and will have a similar workload next season.  Considering there are over 25 different operas staged every year, this seems to be a small fraction.  Admittedly I don’t know what the practice is, and a music director’s job is more than just conducting the orchestra.

For this season I also saw Yannick conduct Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande, I didn’t say much about his conducting in that blog entry, although I did say “filled with beautiful orchestral music.”  Today the orchestra also sounded well, and Yannick elicited an orchestra performance that had wide dynamic and emotional range, and he placed quite a bit of emphasis on some of the dramatic moments – and there were quite a few in the story.

The problem was it felt like Yannick was conducting just an orchestral performance; whether the sound from the orchestra balanced the voices of the singers didn’t seem to factor very much in his equation.  So one could have a singer start an aria well but would then get overwhelmed by the orchestra; this happened a lot.  The stage setup – mostly flat – probably didn’t help the singers a lot with their projection, and they sounded a lot weaker than how they sounded during the ring cycle.

Lest one asserts “of course different singers have different projections,” two of them (Cargill and Morley) also sang at the Ring cycle, where I had no problems with their voices.  (And I wonder if they would sing in the evening’s Gotterdammerung.)

Many stories are based on the French revolution, a tumultuous period where between 20,000 to 40,000 people were guillotined for being enemies of the revolution.  The execution of Carmelite nuns was a historical event, but it is unclear why they were killed.  Previously I had thought it was because they wouldn’t let the state confiscate their property, although I am no longer sure that was the reason after seeing tonight’s performance.

The death scene of the Prioress wasn’t as “mad” as the one I remembered from my prior encounter.  I do wonder whether she had gone mad, or she was afraid to die, or was she simply cursing at death.  The scene was certainly long enough that one would hope to understand the reason behind the emotions.  Or it was simply to contrast how the sisters calmly accepted death at the end?

Curtain Call.

I do understand why the opera started with the sisters lying prostrate on the ground (maybe).  During my trip last year to Germany I found out priests (and by extension nuns) did pray that way during the Reformation times, so it would be reasonable to expect the same tradition was observed three hundred years later.

In looking over my blog entry for the prior performance, I realized that it was also in the middle of a Ring cycle I was attending, and that Leonard and Morley are reprising their roles.

This is the New York Times review.  The reviewer heaps praises on the conductor; apparently he has better ears or a better seat (or both) as there were no balance problems indicated.

Today was the last day of the Met 2018-19 opera season.  If I counted correctly, this would be the 17^th I saw this season.

We drove in, and grab a snack at Gourmet Garage before the noon performance.